UCF's plans to build on Arboretum roil campus

Like Central Park in Manhattan and Lake Eola in Orlando, the Arboretum at the University of Central Florida is a nearby escape from the heavy traffic and urban stress.

It's also where UCF wants to build "academic facilities," which has sparked furor among students, environmentalists and alumni who have circulated petitions, staged protests and — in the students' case — voted overwhelmingly to preserve an 8-acre piece of the forested sanctuary, revered for decades as a setting for outdoor classes, research and simple relaxation.

"We want UCF to be held accountable," said Emily Ruff, a UCF graduate and defender of the Arboretum. "Eighty-seven percent of the student body has voted in favor of keeping this land protected and conserved. Over a thousand students have sent letters of petition. We want them [UCF] to recognize the voice of the students and the community."

Last week, the St. Johns River Water Management District approved the school's first step toward developing the Arboretum property, rejecting student calls to block the work or at least conduct a public hearing so the agency's board members could vote on the issue.

Kirby Green, the water district's executive director, said UCF had met the agency's requirements and left him with virtually no choice but to approve the school's request to redesignate the property for possible development. He never considered sending the matter to his board, he said.

He also said he had read many, if not all, of the protest emails and letters from students and has tracked Arboretum issues for years.

"I've been down and looked at the site," Green said. "I walked it, because there was so much controversy about it," Green said.

State officials in Tallahassee — possibly Gov. Rick Scott and the rest of the Florida Cabinet — will have final say on UCF's quest to rid the property of its environmental protections.

The Arboretum, which spans 82 acres, was established in the late 1960s for education and conservation. In 1996, construction of UCF's main drive, Gemini Boulevard, severed 8 acres from the rest of the parcel, so that it fell within what the circular boulevard defined as the core of the UCF campus.

In seeking to preserve that tiny refuge — now the largest piece of undeveloped land within the campus core — those opposed to the university's development plans accuse the school of devious and dishonest tactics.

The Arboretum, like the rest of UCF's main campus, is owned by the state and leased to the school. But unlike the rest of the campus, much of the Arboretum, including all of the 8 acres, is protected by environmental safeguards that many had thought were ironclad and permanent.

Bill Merck, UCF's chief financial officer, said there is no specific plan or timetable for developing the 8 acres, which are near science and engineering classrooms. But it makes sense, he said, to start preparing the site for construction of additional academic and research facilities.

UCF is already the nation's second-largest brick-and-mortar university, based on its enrollment of 56,000 students.

Merck and other university officials say they have been open about their designs on the 8 acres, have held teacher and student forums, and have posted information on the Internet for the public. The school also is sprucing up its outdoor space across the campus for the benefit of students, they say.

"This is a natural expansion within the circle," Merck said of plans to develop the 8 acres inside the Gemini Boulevard loop.

The 8 acres were designated for extra protection in 1993, when the small tract was still a healthy, forested wetland with trails and educational signs. UCF offered to waive any designs it might have on the land in exchange for a permit to destroy wetlands elsewhere on campus for various expansion projects.

Enforcement of that "conservation easement" was left to the water district, whose regulatory authority over water and wetlands takes in much of Central Florida.

The importance of the 8-acre conservation easement was ratified in 2004 by then-Gov. Jeb Bush and the rest of the Cabinet when they ordered UCF to amend the school's formal blueprint for growth — the Campus Master Plan — to strengthen the Arboretum's safeguards. (State agencies are now reviewing whether UCF will have to ask Gov. Scott to reverse that order.)

Just a few months after Bush signed that 2004 order, UCF officials sent heavy equipment to the Arboretum site, having told water-district officials that they intended to clean up debris from the multiple hurricanes that had swept through the region in August and September. However, instead of just disposing of the storm debris, work crews chopped a significant part of the Arboretum's forest into mulch and altered the drainage of its wetlands.